Fox Theater
240 N. Illinois Street,
Indianapolis,
IN
46204
240 N. Illinois Street,
Indianapolis,
IN
46204
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Opened as the Colonial Theatre on Thanksgiving weekend of 1909. First presenting vaudeville, it later became a burlesque theater for many years.
In later years it was renamed Fox Theatre and was eventually turned into a porn theater before being demolished. Today the site is the location of the American United Life Insurance building on North Illinois Street.
Contributed by
Rod Sims
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Recent comments (view all 3 comments)
The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis says that this theater was briefly known as the Empress Theatre from April, 1937, until December of that year, when it became the Fox Theatre.
Here is a photo, probably from the late 1930s.
This earlier photo of the house as the Colonial shows what must be an end wall of the auditorium. It was a sizable theater which probably extended the length of the hotel building in front of it, and must have originally had more than the 300 seats currently listed above.
Here’s an interior photo showing the doors leading from the foyer onto the main floor of the auditorium.
Joe, the photo that you say is probably from the late-1930’s has a date on it of 10-04-1937. If that date is correct then the Empress became the Fox before December of 1937.
Here’s the beginning of something I came across written on a website about this theater:
“I wasn’t married yet in the very early 60’s when I first discovered the famous Fox Theater on N. Illinois Street in Indianapolis…..but later, when I was married, I still went there! I was actually still in high school, but they let me in anyway……and I had lots of experiences there that will be worth repeating. At that time it was a (very famous, locally) burlesque theater, and just as exciting (for some) when it became a porno movie palace in later years. Real on-stage performances by such ‘names’ at the time as "Evelyn West and her $50,000 Treasure Chest.”
But I soon learned that the REAL excitement was down in the basement — a cavernous, giant restroom area that required a very squeaky door and a long stairway to enter. And I soon found out that no one paid much attention (maybe a raised eyebrow or two?) when they heard that door squeak at the top of the stairway. The place was wide open, and many a straight guy, there only to get off by watching the bosom of the latest burlesque queen flopping around upstairs, would barely glance to the bathroom stalls to the left as he made his way to the urinal to take a leak. He knew what was going on over there — no one tried too hard to hide the action, and sometimes the activity spilled out to the large floor space in front of the stalls…